Quote:Some of America’s top intelligence officials are expressing frustration at the wave of media hysteria that has greeted reports that President Trump may have shared sensitive intelligence with top Russian diplomats last week, with some saying a handful of news organizations are guilty of hyping what amounts to a non story.

Critics of the story, which has consumed official Washington, say Mr. Trump was within his rights as commander in chief to share classified intelligence as he sees fit. They also say the criticism overlooks how President Obama and his top aides shared intelligence with Russia in the fight against the Islamic State group and faced several crises of their own with damaging intelligence leaks.

“People are making way too big a deal of this,” one senior U.S. intelligence official told The Washington Times on Wednesday after reports that Mr. Trump jeopardized a critical Islamic State intelligence source — reportedly cultivated by Israel — by revealing highly classified information to Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador during a meeting in the Oval Office.


“First of all, it was the Obama administration that started the policy of intelligence-sharing with the Russians about the specific problem of ISIS in Syria, and there was no secret that such sharing was going on,” said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “Second, the president can say whatever he wants because he’s the president — assuming he said something sensitive, that’s entirely up to his judgment.”

Another former high-level intelligence official said social media and television news hype spawned by an article that The Washington Post published Monday smacks of hypocrisy, given the relative lack of public outcry over documented intelligence gaffes under the previous administration.

The most prominent incident was in May 2014, when the Obama administration inadvertently outed the CIA station chief in Afghanistan by including the operative’s name in a media pool report circulated to hundreds of reporters, including many from foreign news outlets. The incident triggered headlines across the U.S. media and derailed the career of a key American spy, but resulted in no firings or subsequent disciplinary actions.